Titles and DVD templates need updating. Limited number of audio and video tools might frustrate more advanced users. Early builds didn't load cleanly on some of our machines.

Bottom Line

Pinnacle Studio Plus 10 is an easy-to-use program with a comprehensive feature set and great options for home video makers. Our only reservation: We had trouble getting it to load and run on several of our PCs.

With excellent usability and compelling core features, Pinnacle Studio is a very good video-editing program for the majority of home users. Unfortunately, two of our three testers had trouble installing and running 10.0 and 10.1 builds on typical real-world machines, which tempers our enthusiasm. That said, Pinnacle reports that have not seen our installation in their labs, nor have they had feedback about it being an issue from customers so far. If you're unsure, Pinnacle is offering a trial version you can download and try before you buy.

Pinnacle offers three versions of Studio, with the Basic version ($69.99 direct) lacking the overlay track necessary for picture-in-picture and chroma-key effects, speed adjustments, and the ability to create DVDs with more than one menu. Most of our comments refer to the Plus version ($99.99), though a MediaSuite edition ($129.99) adds image- and audio-editing tools not discussed here.

From its inception, Studio was designed to be an easy-to-use consumer editor, with features customized for consumer video projects. Studio's clutter-free, three-window interface is very intuitive and remains largely unchanged in the new version. Studio's efficient workflow is also unchanged. We especially like the ability to split and annotate clips in the Album, which helps isolate clips to include in the project. And we also like the storyboard and timeline setups for sequencing content.

Transitions include an extensive range of standards like dissolves and wipes, with optional theme packs for weddings, sporting events and the likea key feature Premiere Elements can't match. In terms of special effects, Studio's automatic color correction is best in breed, as is its image stabilization feature, which Premiere Elements doesn't offer. Studio Plus includes additional corrective filters (like RGB color balance), with fun artistic effects like old film, earthquake, lens flare and lightning that provide great accents for home movies. You can also purchase extra packs of effects for even more editing creativity.

Studio's still-image pan-and-zoom capabilities are flexible and intuitive, and audio features, which include a real time audio mixer and SmartSound background music creation, are also superior to Premiere Elements. Though Studio's canned DVD menus need updating, the program's DVD authoring capabilities are extraordinarily flexible, with unlimited menu branching and menu customization.

The Plus version features an additional audio and video track for chroma-key and picture-in-picture effects. With the dedicated title track and two additional audio tracks for background music and narration, Studio offers three video design layers and four audio tracks. While sufficient for most projects, this can't match the flexibility offered by Premiere Element's 99 audio and video tracks.

Historically, readers have liked Studio's features and usability, but some complained of stability issues, and this is the primary focus of Studio's new release. Specifically, Studio 10 incorporates the preview and rendering engine of its prosumer stablemate, Liquid Edition, which is highly regarded for stability, real-time preview capabilities, and multiformat file handling. To assess the stability of both Premiere Elements and Studio, we transferred the project files and content of our test project to the home computers of two PC Magazine staffers, solely to render and produce our test DVD, which seems to be the most frequent breaking point of the software. While certainly unscientific, our results were mixed. On one clean test system (new installation of Windows XP, with no other programs loaded), the program loaded and worked without a hitch. But in more real-world trials, using PCs that have been in service a few months and have the typical range of programs loaded, things didn't go as smoothly. One staffer couldn't get the program to load on one machine, and on another, it loaded but ran very slowly. Our third staffer couldn't get it to load at all.

On the plus side, Studio now includes Insta-Save technology, which continuously saves all edit decisions, so if you do crash, you won't lose any work. We did crash the program several times when working with late beta code, and Insta-Save worked as advertised, allowing us to reload the program and immediately pick up where we left off.

The Liquid engine also boosts Studio's preview capabilities, adding preview out through a second monitor or via your DV camera or TV card. Note that the Liquid engine also boosted RAM consumption, which routinely exceeded 850MB on our tests. To run Studio comfortably, you're going to need at least 1GB of RAM. Note that to capture and edit 1080i HDV video, another feature enabled by the Liquid engine, you'll need at least 1GB of RAM as well as a graphics card with 256MB of dedicated video memory.

Other new features include key framing for most video effects, which allow users to customize parameters over time. While the feature worked as advertised, the implementation felt cramped and lacked the precision offered by Premiere Elements key-frame features. Pinnacle now also bundles the Instant DVD Recorder with all Studio versions, a convenient interface for converting VHS and other tape-based media to DVD in a single step.

In performance trials (on a 3.2-GHz HP xw4100 workstation with 2GB of RAM, using 8X media from Verbatim and Ridata and burning to an HP DVD Writer 300n DVD+R recorder), Studio rendered our 12-minute test project into MPEG-2 format in 17 minutes 41 seconds, roughly 2 minutes faster than Premiere Elements (19:49). After deleting all temporary files to start from scratch with both products, Studio produced a DVD for the project in 39:34, compared with 39:36 for Premiere Elements.

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